4 comments:

Naturally, I'm not expecting an answer to this but as an Orthodox Christian why would you care what the pope says? The pope of Rome is for Roman Catholics. He has no connexion to the Orthodox Church whatsoever.

Personally, one thing that I particularly enjoy about this papacy is Bergoglio's rather cavalier attitude to the job; his off-the-cuff remarks; his spontaneous telephone calls; all that spurious humility, &c. It really highlights the fatuousness of popery in a way that Ratzinger's inconsistent taste for tat and pomp didn't, or rather did for those of us with eyes to see. If you're worried that Bergoglio is a heretic, which he undoubtedly is, again I don't see the problem. As I have already said, the pope of Rome is for Roman Catholics.

It seems to me that people who criticize pope Francis do so because he is not like his predecessor. Are all traditionalists and Orthodox neophytes who haven't fully shaken off the yoke of popery really that shallow? The position of an Orthodox Christian should be that the pope of Rome is an heretic, indeed the arch-heretic, and a schismatic. Concern about Bergoglio's silly rhetoric is therefore not just a waste of time but fond, vain nostalgia, not dissimilar to the character Pliable from The Pilgrim's Progress.

You make a fair point. Yes, the Pope, any Pope who is not Orthodox is a heretic. That said, the Roman Catholic Church is among the most influential institutions in the world. What it does, what it says and what it teaches, these things are all extremely important. Until fairly recently Rome held the line on most of the important moral and social issues. Cracks in this particular dam have been evident since at least the 1960's (arguably earlier). But it is only recently that we are beginning to see a bulwark that defended the historic social, political and cultural order of Western Civilization begin to actually crumble. For all its shortcomings, the Roman Church could, again until quite recently, be seen as a reliable ally in the defense of Christendom. I hesitate to make predictions, my crustal ball has been lying to me with great regularity of late, but I fear that Benedict XVI may go down as the last Catholic Pope.

And that would be a catastrophe for Christianity. Anyone who doesn't understand the power and influence of the Roman Church is simply naive.

But surely the Roman Catholic church IS western civilization, in a nutshell? And as for holding the line on social and moral issues, I'm sure that was for all the wrong reasons. The kind of paganism of contemporary Western culture, secularism, &c are all the counter-products of Popish influence. There would have been no Reformation without the false doctrine and superstition of the Roman church. There would have been no wars of religion and "enlightenment" without that, and so on. Rome's putatively conservative, even puritanical, stance on social and moral issues, to me, comes across as a ruse for something more sinister; and certainly a means of perpetuating its existence. Just like pope Francis. A reader from Brazil who commented on the last post here succinctly described pope Francis as a Politically Correct demagogue. Quite right. What better way of sucking up to the secular political and economic class than to complain about "climate change" and "extremism"?! Ratzinger was really no different in this sense; neither, for that matter, is the parish priest of Istanbul (Lord love him!). For most people, the Roman Catholic church is just a reactionary, anachronistic institution, long out of date. And who could possibly blame them for thinking this?

I don't see the correlation between the moral collapse of the Roman church and a catastrophe for Christianity. Certainly Western civilization has already collapsed morally, and the "afterglow" of Christian moral influence has been eclipsed by secularism. That said, there is no question that the RC church exerts a powerful influence. Since, however, this is only within the context of western civilization, itself one of the miserable bastards of Rome's spiritual fornication, surely the pope of Rome, and the entire RC hierarchy, must be seen as one of the lords of this world, just as evil as politicians, celebrities and CEOs. John Paul II skillfully roled all those things into one! It's high time we all stopped looking to the RCC as this kind of bulwark against secularism, when it has so obviously failed, and instead put our trust in the True Church - the Orthodox Church.

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